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Aftermath
And then they were gone. An eerie silence descended on the village; a deceiving peace mirrored in the breathless stare of a gut-shot child, too confused to realize she is dying. Even the fires seemed to burn quietly, the smoldering remains of the houses of her neighbors. Each was a pyre, a pathetic monument to the memory of those so easily forgotten. A breeze blew through the smoking ruins, gentle fingers of wind brushing strands of hair across the eyes of the dying girl. It carried the smoke and the sickly-sweet charnel stench of burning families. In the wake of its passage, the calm was shattered by the crashing fall of the burning longhouse. The girl’s head jerked up as she awoke to her pain, and the roar of the renewed fire was punctuated by her high, heartbreaking keen. “Filiadh, I think this one is alive.” The rebel lord stalked over to where his surgeon was picking through the razed village in a search for survivors that had, until that moment, been in vain. When he got there he could not see at first whatever had caught Ansen’s attention. Then a tiny, soot-blackened arm separated itself from the muddy ruin that had been the foundation of a home, and he saw that what had looked like just another lump of blood and grime was in fact the body of a child, a black-fletched arrow jutting angrily from an ugly wound in its belly. “My god,” said Ansen. “It’s a little girl.” Filiadh looked down at the weakly moving child and watched her eyes, shockingly blue in her mud covered face, flutter as pain and fear glazed them into incomprehension. “Can you save her?” he asked. “I don’t know, m’Lord. She’s been wounded in the stomach. Hurts like this are difficult to heal.” “Try.” “If you say so sir. Don’t get your hopes up, though. She’s strong, or she wouldn’t have survived the last three hours, but I’ve seen grown men die of lesser wounds.” The surgeon shook his head before calling two men over to aid him. “Ansen,” said the haggard lord, “This was my village. My people. Mine!” He shook his balding head, and resumed in a quiet, almost subdued voice, “And so is the responsibility. I owe a debt to these dead, and the only person left alive to receive payment is that little girl. I want her to live.” The surgeon nodded, but resignation tightened his lips as he bent to his work. Filiadh placed a hand on his shoulder. “Tell me, Ansen. Those men who died of lesser wounds… were they tended by you?” Ansen looked up with a smile that was almost natural. “No, m’Lord. No they were not.” He took a deep breath. “I’ll do my best.” Filiadh nodded, gave his friend’s shoulder a tired squeeze, and turned to survey the wreckage that had once been a thriving community. His eyes hardened. Bandits he understood. In fact, many used the term to describe his own men, now that he had rebelled against the grasping weakling in Ravenstern and taken these lands for his own. He knew the hardscrabble life that could lead men to kill. He had lived that life. But this? This was the work of no bandit. Two bodies had been found in the wreckage which did not belong to men of the village. Both wore livery, and the story it told chilled the old warrior’s blood. His village had been sacked, its people brutally raped and murdered… and it had been done by a lord of Sarleon. story by Misguided Category:Tales from Pendor